National Monitoring Directorate
The National Monitoring Directorate is the governmental agency established as the interface between the Iraqi government and the United Nations Special Commission. The
Commission has often discovered that facilities have provided accurate information to the National Monitoring Directorate but this information has then been manipulated so that the monitoring declarations presented to the Commission are misleading and inaccurate.
One of the tasks of the National Monitoring Directorate is to provide minders who travel with the Commission's inspection teams to ensure that they are granted immediate and unconditional access to the sites under monitoring. The National Monitoring Directorate has sought to constrain the Commission's activities by restricting the times and days during which it would respond to requests for minders. When minders from the National Monitoring Directorate escort the Commission's inspectors, they have often interrupted interviews and instructed Iraqi site personnel to provide wrong information or to refuse to answer relevant questions.
. Iraq has further sought to constrain monitoring activities by implementing a new policy whereby instructions have been issued to all sites and facilities that access be refused to the inspectors unless representatives of the National Monitoring Directorate are present. Iraq has tried to enforce new procedures that seek to require prior approval from the National Monitoring Directorate for the provision of documents found by inspectors at sites. These violations of the Commission's rights have been protested by the Chairman in a series of letters to senior Iraqi officials and to the Deputy Prime Minister and were raised with him by the Chairman during his bimonthly meetings.
Sources and Resources
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/iraq/agency/nmd.htm
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Updated Wednesday, February 25, 1998 6:07:49 PM
